Crimson Banner Executioner
Motivation: Surpass all previous Crimson Banner Executioners Caste: Battles Anima Banner: Swirling red, like blood in water. The youth who would become the Crimson Banner Executioner was born in Chiaroscuro to a jeweler raped by a minor Delzahn noble. The young half-breed got in a lot of fights over his mixed and illegitimate parentage before the Bureau of Destiny found him and took him to Yu-Shan for training. He was fated to receive the Exaltation of the Crimson Banner Executioner. The first Crimson Banner Executioner had died in the Usurpation killing Solars for the Bronze Faction. Two subsequent incarnations had followed both Gold and Bronze paths, and both factions tried recruiting the young Shieldbearer-to-be. During one training mission in Creation, the future Sidereal stumbled into a plot involving a small god who was selling prophecies—inside information gleaned from the Loom of Fate—to a Fair Folk noble. The young man Exalted while attempting to escape, slew the raksha noble and was gravely wounded by the renegade god before other Sidereals arrived. The traitorous god escaped into the Wyld, but not before warning the new Crimson Banner Executioner that he’d better not show his face in Creation again. All in all, the young Seer’s trainers agreed it was rather fortunate that Banner’s inheritance included a powerful suit of magitech armor that—among other benefits—made its wearer invisible to the Loom of Fate and the prophetic powers of the gods. Crimson Banner Executioner became an assassin for the Bureau of Destiny, stalking spirits and other targets with arcane perceptions. He also chose to ally with the Gold Faction in this incarnation and has covert contact with a number of Lawgivers. Crimson Banner Executioner is an intensely private person. He doesn’t speak much. His work and training seems to consume him entirely: He doesn’t even own a home in Yu-Shan, preferring to lodge in the Crimson Panoply of Victory itself. He spends so much time in his armor that rumors spread about horrible disfigurement or a curse from the renegade god if he ever does show his face again. These rumors are deliberate plants by his superiors in the Division of Battles, as part of a long plan to draw the renegade god out of hiding. In fact, Banner has an ordinary Southerner’s dark skin and close-cropped black hair but no features more distinguishing than that. Out of his armor, he could walk unnoticed down any street from Kirighast to the Lap. In addition to developing his prowess at combat, infiltration and assassination, Banner strives to improve his skills as a magitechnician. He needs such skills to maintain his armor and hopes to work on other magitech weaponry as well. Banner delays learning supernatural martial arts in favor of these other skills. He has an excellent sifu, though: a set of memory-crystals in the armor that carry the personality of the first Crimson Banner Executioner. Banner and his predecessor do not get along especially well, not least because Banner joined the Gold Faction specifically to recompense the new Solars for murdering their First Age incarnations. Still, the first Banner has little choice but to work with her heir; she built the armor not to work for any other Exaltation.